


Sherlollipops - Kinda-Sorta

by MizJoely



Series: 221 Sherlollipops [107]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Sherlolly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-14
Updated: 2015-11-14
Packaged: 2018-05-01 15:01:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5210300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MizJoely/pseuds/MizJoely
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>takemyhandandsayrun on tumblr said: Okay, prompt time! What about if after Sherlock comes back and John's mad, and Sherlock takes Molly on a case it isn't just one time. So when John comes to his senses Sherlock and Molly are already a team. So the three of them work together to have awesome fun times as Sherlock slowly realized that he kinda sorta is in love with the lovely miss Hooper.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sherlollipops - Kinda-Sorta

It didn’t happen quickly, certainly not overnight, although it was an overnight case that finally brought it to his attention. John was finally over his snit about Sherlock lying to him – all right, yes, fine, it had taken what amounted to emotional manipulation for him to stop being mad, but all’s well that ends well, wasn’t that the saying? At any rate having Molly along on cases now and then certainly had gone a long way toward Sherlock settling back into his old life and helping John forgive his not-dead friend. John had as much as said so, after he’d finished yelling at Sherlock about lying about the bomb in the train car.

Molly, on the other hand, had been quite unhappy with him. Not John, Sherlock. She’d yelled at him longer than John had and very nearly slapped him. But the ring on her hand seemed to catch her attention as she raised it, and she’d very quietly dropped it back to her side and demanded that Sherlock never do anything so cold and manipulative to his best friend again.

What else could he do but promise to try and do better? “John’s used to it,” had been his (rather weak) argument, but all she’d done was glare and stalk off, twisting the (slightly too large) ring on her finger in the way she had when she was deeply distressed. It had become his gauge, more than anything else; he needed to know, for some reason he wouldn’t admit to, if she was merely angry or really hurt by his words or actions.

The problem was, he didn’t _like_ using that ring as her emotional tell. He’d rather go back to the days when he was simply groping in the dark after reasons for Molly’s moods. Oh, not her regular moods – he could tell when she’d had a difficult autopsy to perform or when a co-worker was being an ass or even when she’d spilled her coffee on the way to work. It was strictly her emotions toward _him_ that he had trouble figuring out, and the ring, much as it helped – well, it had to go.

Thus his epiphany on the overnight case in Exeter. John had fallen into an exhausted sleep after a long phone conversation with his fiancée, who was holding down the fort in London (Mary had been rather cross with John for skipping out on his clinic rotation but as always she’d quickly forgiven him). Molly had taken the train to help with the autopsy (since in this case it was the local coroner who was the victim and his assistant the main suspect), discovered the cause of death (which Sherlock had already deduced but needed confirmed), and a long, muddy foot-race had ensued when the suspect (confirmed as killer) had bolted.

They were due back in London in the morning, John was snoring away on his bed, Molly was presumably asleep in her room, and Sherlock was lying wide-awake on his back and wondering when the hell he’d managed to kinda-sorta fall in love with his pathologist.

Had it been during his exile, when knowing she was one of a small group of people waiting for him to come back had helped him sleep? Had it been before that, when she’d shown how clearly she saw him? Sooner, even? When she’d worn that figure-hugging dress during a Christmas party he’d rather not admit to remembering? He’d sincerely apologized to her for his unnecessary nastiness to her…but why? Had it been the stirrings of love? Was that truly what he was feeling now? Was that why he’d been so distraught when the suspect, cornered in a barn and surrounded by unhappily mooing cows, had attempted to take Molly hostage?

“Oh for God’s sake!” he exclaimed, throwing off the covers and swinging his legs over the side of the bed. John started, snorted, then went back to snoring, barely even awakened by the sound of his former flatmate’s agitation.

Sherlock pulled on his clothes from the day before and stormed out of the room, desperately in need of a smoke. As soon as he exited the hotel lobby and headed for the darkest corner he could find, however, he stopped short. 

He wasn’t the only one out for a clandestine smoke in the middle of the night. A dark silhouette, barely visible in the moonlight, stood before him. Female. Not more than 5’3” tall. Long hair.

Molly Hooper. Smoking. The world was surely about to end.

“I don’t usually smoke,” she said as he moved to stand next to her. “I used to, in med school. Stress reliever.” She took a slow drag, inhaled deeply, then let it out slowly. “I quit ages ago.”

“So why start up again?” Sherlock asked, silently accepting the lighter she offered him. Pink, with a cat’s face plastered on either side. He lit his own cig and waited for her answer.

She shrugged. “Dunno. And yes, before you deduce it, I’m lying. I know why, I just don’t want to face the facts.”

“And what are the facts?”

“That I’m not in love with my fiancé.”

He hadn’t expected such a bald statement from her, and blamed his next words on his startlement. “Then who _are_ you in love with?”

She took another long drag of her smoke, dropped it to the pavement and ground it out with her foot before simply walking away.

Sherlock, on the other hand, remained where he was, smoking cigarette after cigarette, until the sky began to lighten. Then he returned to the hotel, rousted John, told him to get ready to leave, and made sure the three of them were on the first train back to London.

Molly’s engagement ring, he couldn’t help but notice, was no longer on her finger. Nor did it make a reappearance when he saw her next, a week later. She did, however, look noticeably more at peace than she had. And when he tentatively asked her to join him for a cup of coffee…she accepted with a smile that lit up the darkest, coldest places in his heart.

Kinda-sorta, he mused as they strolled along the pavement to the coffee shop near Barts that they both favored, might not be the correct definition of his feelings after all.


End file.
